China
Conference Series II:
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By
Brian McAdam
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Introduction
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Hong
Kong was my second posting in my Foreign Service career. I arrived in 1968
from London, England about two years after the madness of the Cultural
Revolution, had begun when young Red Guards terrorized China from
1966-1976, when 1-2 million persons were killed and between 12-20 million
people were forcibly sent to live in the rural areas to be re-educated. 1
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During
my first three years in Hong Kong I interviewed many applicants to Canada
who had just recently fled the Cultural Revolution and a few that had
survived the great famine when an estimated 30 million starved to death
between 1958-1962, because of another of Mao’s harebrained schemes. 2
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A new book “portrays [Mao] as a sociopath who loved
killing and allowed millions of peasants to starve to death while he
exported food to pay for his nuclear weapons; a man whose legendary
achievements in the Long March were an invention; a man who turned China
into a cultural desert of misery and violence, while maintaining dozens of
luxury villas and a troupe of female sexual partners.”
3
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My views of the
Communist regime became established at that time from what I heard and read
then and later.
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I returned again to
Hong Kong from 1989-1993; arriving a couple months after the Tiananmen
Square massacre on June 4th
1989.
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The views I express today are my personal views and do
not reflect in any way the Canadian government’s position on any of these
issues.
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My
views however parallel and reinforce the brilliant analysis contained in the
Nine
Commentaries on the Communist Party.
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So I speak to you as a
private person who has been a “China Watcher” for many decades.
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The
China Gold Rush
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Strangely
most Westerners do not realize that the Communist Chinese party is the
greatest mass murderer and destroyer of humanity in the history of the
world.
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In
spite of the reality that the Communist
Party of China (CCP) is responsible for the deaths of more people than
both Hitler or Stalin combined: an estimated 47-75 million people, and has
an abominable record of abuse of human rights, why have many in the Western
establishment tried to give the Communist regime and its leaders a positive
image and a patina of respectability?
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For
centuries Western businessmen have lusted over the prospect of selling goods
in what they saw as the world's largest market, with China's teeming 1.3
billion people just waiting for an opportunity to buy their wares. Many are
lured by the idea that “if you
can sell a widget to every person in China then that's a billion dollars and
you can go play golf the rest of your life.” 4
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“
Deng Xiaoping threw the doors open to capitalism in 1978. “To Get Rich is
Glorious” became the slogan of the new China.5 Then he
“launched the new economic reform campaign of 1992, which caused a surge
of economic growth and triggered an explosion of entrepreneurial activity."
6
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Major
Western multi-national companies and governments closed their eyes to human
rights abuses to appease China. They rushed out in the 1990s to make
multi-billion dollar deals with the “Butchers of Beijing” who murdered
thousands of unarmed students in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
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China,
which is still one of the most repressive and blood stained regimes in the
world, invited Western companies to locate new factories there, where
health, safety and pollution standards are ignored and workers are paid only
$2 a day. China has subsequently become the world’s factory. 7
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As
the price of access, Beijing demanded that Western companies transfer
technology to Chinese partners. What the companies did not transfer, China
extorted, or stole or counterfeited. Most Western countries now have massive
trade deficits with China causing the loss of thousands of jobs, as they
continue to be willingly deceived. 8
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Only
a minority of the companies who
have invested in China are actually making any profit.
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“Half
of all Mainland business deals involve blatant corruption,” Stirling
Seagrave, author of the book Lords of the Rim explains: “the new elite hides its money
offshore, causing one of the greatest financial riptides in history,” with
an estimated $28-40 billion a year leaving China in what he terms “black
money.” 9
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The
number one concern of people in China is corruption. Many of the corrupt
hold high political and government offices. This may eventually be the
reason that will cause the collapse of the regime.
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For
example, the deputy mayor of Beijing embezzled more than U.S. $38 million. .
He insisted he only received Y300 a month (Cdn$50), even though he lived a
luxurious lifestyle, with a $130 million villa. 10
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Five
officials embezzled US$500 million from the Bank of China at a branch in
Guangdong. 11
Predictably
we find that three of these bankers are now believed to be hiding in
British Columbia since October 2001, with US$75 million they allegedly
stole from the Bank of China. 12
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“Love
is blind and greed is insatiable,” according to a Chinese proverb.
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Former
Chinese leader Jang Zemin once said: “ Intimidate with force and seduce
with money.”
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The
West was seduced and is being intimidated.
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There
are in essence two Chinas. One is glitzy and glamorous - where greed
prevails. The other behind the façade, is rural China with almost one
billion poverty-stricken peasants. Ironically, “In
China, the divide between rich and poor is greater than before the
peasant-led revolution that brought the Communist Party to power in 1949.”
13
Democracy
activists are still incarcerated, tortured and murdered.
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Harry
Wu, who spent 19 years in the Chinese
laogai (slave labor camps), estimates that 50 million people have been
sent to those camps since 1949. Six
to eight million are imprisoned in approximately 1,155 prison
camps - making slave labor goods being consumed by free-spending
Westerners oblivious or indifferent to the plight of those poor souls. 14
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The
tyranny is unchanged.
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The
Demise of the Communist Party
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However,
some think that there are many signs indicating an imminent demise of the
Communist Party in China.
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Others
think this is impossible and that the CCP will rule forever.
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Some
believe China is actually no longer a Communist state; it has become a
mature fascist state.
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I,
and many others think change to democracy is inevitable.
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“Revolution
is impossible until it is inevitable,” said Leon Trotsky.
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“All
the experts acknowledge that the People's Republic faces serious
challenges: failing state-owned enterprises and banks, rising corruption,
a deteriorating environment, a slowing economy, and growing ethnic and
religious unrest, just to name a few of the most obvious. Peasants
riot and workers go on the rampage, hundreds of times a day.
Demonstrations are becoming more frequent and larger-with every passing
year.” Joe
Studwell, who is one of the most respected business journalists covering
China, predicts a full-blown economic and political crisis for China. 15
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Fear
of a regime collapse in China is part of the CCP’s propaganda. China’s
late leader Deng
Xiaoping told Singapore’s Prime minister, Lee Kwan Yew about the Tiananmen
crisis, “If 200,000 students have to be shot, shoot them, because the
alternative is China in chaos for another hundred years.” 16
There have been much scare mongering that fighters for democracy could cause
a civil war with ‘blood flowing like a river’ resulting in ‘hundreds
of millions of refugees fleeing the country’ leading to a ‘world
scale’ disaster. 17
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Bruce
Gilley, a China hand for more than a decade, puts forward the hypothesis in
his book, that within the next few decades, perhaps as early as 2010, China
will become a democracy. He says:
“Where an authoritarian regime fails to respond to a prolonged crisis with
political reforms, popular mobilization becomes more likely."
While
this suggests violence Gilley believes that violence will be constrained as
it was for the 1989 protests and because China is “tired of the violence
by the Party and eager to demonstrate its civility.” Furthermore he argues
that in the Third wave that began in the early 1970s, he writes that
policemen and soldiers have laid down their rifles and welcomed change.
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A
major new study released in May by Freedom House shows that nonviolent
"people power" movements are the strongest force in most
successful transitions to democracy.
The study finds that "people power" is a frequent
phenomenon, and civic coalitions are a major presence in most
transitions.” Non-violent civic resistance was a strong influence in 70
percent of the 67 countries where dictatorships have fallen since 1972,
Civic resistance employs such tactics as mass protests, boycotts, blockades,
strikes, and civil disobedience to challenge the legitimacy of and erode
support for authoritarian rulers.
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Impacts:
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“The
CCP’s main aim for the civilian economy is to support the building of
modern millitary
weapons and to support the aims of the PLA.” 19
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The
CCP has been posing an increasing threat to the rest of the world for a long
time, with generals threatening nuclear attacks to maintain control.
China can launch nuclear weapons that in thirty minutes could kill one
hundred million people.
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China
seems to be engaging in nuclear brinkmanship. 20
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“History
demonstrates that a free people, who are free to choose, do not wage
aggressive war. The only ultimate deterrence is democracy,” writes
Constantine Menges. 21
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The
world’s best hope is to nurture and empower the pro-democracy forces in
China to bring about a transition.
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Menges
writes in the final chapter of his book China-The
Gathering Storm before he died:
“History has no guarantees about the future. China may
become democratic in the next years or not for decades. We know that a
nuclear-armed Communist China, where the regime controls an advanced
technology sector and is far better armed, would be a state that could
become ever more dangerous. We know that Communist regimes can reform and
evolve from reform Communism to political democracy. We know that this is
better for their people and for peace – these are the lessons of Eastern
Europe since 1989 and in Western Europe and Japan since 1945.”
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The
Nine Commentaries are educating the population in China about the evil
regime that has suppressed this information for years.
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The
Nine
Commentaries on the Communist Party
should be mandatory reading not only in China, but also in the West.
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End
Notes
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1.
(a) Stephane Courtois,
Jean-Louis Margolin & others, (1999)
The
Black Book of Communism,
Harvard University Press: The Black Book of Communism estimates that 1-2 million were
murdered during the Cultural Revolution by Red Guards who were primarily
students and school children unleashed by Mao between 1966-76. Between 3-4
million cadres were imprisoned. “Among the intellectuals 142,000 teachers,
53,000 scientists, 500 teachers of medicine, and 2,000 artists and writers
were persecuted, and many of them were killed or committed suicide.”
Between 12 million to 20 million people were forcibly ruralized.
Harry Wu describes security guards eating the brain of a man just executed.
His crime had been to scribble ‘Down with Chairman Mao’ on a
wall.”
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(b)
Jonathan D. Spence, (1990) Extracts about the Cultural Revolution
from The
Search for Modern China, W.W.
Norton: “The
leaders of the Cultural Revolution called for a comprehensive attack on
the ‘four old’ elements within Chinese society – old customs, old
habits, old culture, and old thinking- but they left it to the local Red
Guard initiative to apply these terms." “Red guards eager to
prove their revolutionary integrity turned on anyone who had Western
education or dealings with Western businessmen or missionaries, and all
intellectuals could be charged with ’feudal’ or ‘reactionary’
modes of thinking. The techniques of public humiliation grew more and more
complex and painful as the identified victims were forced to parade
through the streets in dunce caps or with self-incriminatory placards
around their necks…before jeering crowds.” “Thousands of
intellectuals were beaten to death…others committed suicide”
Thousands more were
imprisoned, often in solitary confinement for years. Millions were
relocated to purify themselves through labor in the countryside”.
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2.
Jasper Becker,
(1996) Hungry
Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, Henry
Holt & Co.
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3.
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday,
(2005) Mao:
the Unknown Story, Knopf
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4.
(a) Ethan Gutmann, (2004) Losing
the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal,
Encounter Books: "…less than a third of of American companies, at
best were making quarterly profits, and only 5 percent were making a
profit if you factored in their original investment.”
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(b)
Joe Studwell, (2003) The
China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth,
Grove Press: “In 1998, a survey of 229 foreign invested
businesses…showed that only 38 per cent of all manufacturers were covering
their operating costs.” The situation was further skewed
by creative accounting. As “fewer still could have claimed to be breaking
even.”
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©
IBID: – Ralph A. Pfeifer of
IBM PC mused to the American press ‘With
their labor force, their resources, and their market, anything could happen.
If we could just sell one IBM PC for every hundred people in China, or every
1,000, or every 10,000…He left the sentence unfinished.” On
December 8, 2004 IBM announced the sale of its PC business to China’s
Lenovo for &1.75 billion. IBM
sells PC business to Chinese firm in $1.75 Billion deal
by
Mike Musgrove Washington
Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, December 8, 2004
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5.
Sterling Seagrave, (1995) Lords
of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese, Putnam and
Sons: He also says: “By
1995, it was estimated that the Deng family’s interests in fourteen
publicly listed Hong Kong companies were worth more than two billion
dollars.”
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6.
James Miles,
(1996) The
Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray,
University of Michigan:
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7.
(a) Stephane
Courtois, Jean-Louis Margolin & others,
(1999) The
Black Book of Communism,
Harvard University Press
(b)
Details about the China gold rush: Joe Studwell,
(2003) The
China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth,
Grove Press
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8.
(a)
Canada has been rapidly developing a significant trade imbalance with
China instead of “a modest balanced trading relationship” we had a
decade ago. China exported $15.9 billion worth of goods to Canada in 2002,
a 150% increase in five years, while Canada only exported $4.1 billion
worth of goods to them. “In 1995, Canada's trade deficit with China
was barely $1.2 billion. By 2003, it had exploded to
nearly $13.8 billion,” according to Statistics Canada.
Principal Canadian exports to China have always been agricultural
products, wood and wood products including paper since the beginning of
the 20th century. Now China is exporting hi-tech items to Canada
like computers, cell phones, video recording equipment, etc., while Canada
is still mainly exporting agricultural products to China; contrary to
expectations. “”The structure of trade between China and Canada would
make you wonder which one is the developed economy and which one is the
developing country.” “As a percentage of gross domestic product,
Canada’s trade deficit with China is actually bigger than the United
States.” “That imbalance represents at least 50,000 lost Canadian
jobs,” according to an economist.
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(b)
Ethan Gutmann, (2004) Losing
the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal,
“As much as 30 percent of Chinese manufacturing was dedicated to
counterfeit goods, According to Ethan Gutmann, Losing the New China – A
story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal, Encounter Books, San
Francisco, 2004: "China
continues to tolerate rampant piracy of copyrighted U.S. material, with
rates running above ninety percent across all copyright industries for
2003. This will cost U.S. industries an estimated $2.6 billion in lost
profits in 2004," noted the 2004 report by the U.S.
- China Economic and Security Review Commission.
In
May 2005 the U.S. put Canada on a piracy watch list, as it has become a
haven for pirated and counterfeit goods many of which were produced in
China. "U.S.
companies are sometimes forced to transfer technology to Chinese partners
as a condition in business deals. The Chinese government violates its WTO
(World Trade Organization) obligations when it expressly requires
technology transfers as a condition of doing business. It is also able to
compel such transfers through use of its regulatory powers as well as its
extensive role in the economy. These technology transfers pose substantial
economic and security concerns for the United States," states the
2004 U.S.-China report.”
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9. Sterling Seagrave, (1995) Lords
of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese
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10.
Jasper Becker, (15JUL95) Wang’s
villa costs $130 million, SCMP
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11.
Jason Leow,
(Feb 2002) Bank of China admits officials
stole $915m Straits
Times China Bureau
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12.
Fabian Dawson,
(February 7, 2002) Chinese bankers on the run hiding in BC Asian Pacific
Post (April 22, 2004) Banker
who stole millions from China has been sent home to jail
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13.
Peter S. Goodman,
Rural
poor aren't sharing in spoils of China's changes-
Costs of Goods Rise,
Standard of Living Falls, Washington
Post, July 12, 2005
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14.
George Vecsey
& Harry Wu, (1996) Troublemaker::
One Man's Crusade Against China's Cruelty, Crown
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15.
Joe Studwell, (2003) The
China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth
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16.
Eric Margolis, (2002) War
at the top of the world: The struggle for Afghanistan and Asia,
Key Porter Books Ltd.
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17.
Bruce Gilley, (2004) China's
Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead, Columbia
Univ. Press
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18.
Freedom House: How
Freedom is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy
Washington: 2005
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19.
The
Cox Report – Report of the House Select Committee on U.S. National
Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of
China. 1999.
The Cox Report: Chapter 1
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20.
(a)
Gary Schmitt, & Blumenthal, Wishful
Thinking in Our Time From
the August 8, 2005 issue: The Pentagon looks at China, and blinks.
08/08/2005, Volume 010, Issue 44
As
General Zhu Chenghu, dean of China's National Defense University, not so
subtly reminded American visitors recently: Should the United States
intervene in a conflict between China and Taiwan, "the Americans will
have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of [their] cities will be
destroyed by the Chinese" nuclear weapons.
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21.
Constantine C. Menges, (2005) China:
The Gathering Threat, Nelson Current
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Keeping an eye on Communist, Totalitarian China, and its influence both globally, and we as Canadians. I have come to the opinion that we are rarely privy to truth regarding the real goal, the agenda of Red China, and it's implications for Canada [and North America as a whole]. No more can we rely on our media as more and more information on China is actively being swept under the carpet - not for consumption.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
China Conference Series II:
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